poison seeps down this wretched hallway thick mud-like from broken pipes churning through the walls flooding over creaking floorboards over splintered banisters through flaked, chipping asylum-green painted walls the back entrance to the building lets out to a dingy, trash-filled parking lot that no one can park in anymore not if you care about having anything left in the morning besides a metal shell broken fences worn down backed into and torn out of let nothing in or out except the innocent and the brave scaling the fence the crazy and empty-eyed wander those halls mumbling half-truths and fairytales the next hit next slam just a pipeful hands out for next few dollars to score right there
down the front concrete steps they stumbled some sat nodding leaning into the broken doorway or falling into the lip of the side steps you can watch the world from here look out through old, ripped volleyball netting across sand to a cordoned off poison sea that once held yelling kids frolicking in its waters not today, man its closed off from here to the other side and down ten miles of coastline dead sea poisoned sea murky chemical wasteland its taken away the shoreline shells the life the simplicity of life at the water on heated days
its like night and day now the only distraction is the lit-up ferris wheel hanging sideways off a pier that once held nothing you can hear pinballs and shouts of the young and the old at the entrance ramp smell fish frying and hot dogs and greasy fries remember jean-paul lived upstairs at the merry-go-round apartments he used to sneak us in and we’d sit on the brightly painted horses and smoke and smoke and laugh and laugh at 3am eat corndogs ’til we puked then smoke some more we heard he OD’d one night alone with a needle poking out of his arm and nobody found him for close to two weeks until the smell wafted down through the walls of the cafe next door while his cats were yowling at the windows and something had been nibbling at his lifeless face
which piece of this world do you carry refusing to set on this broken pavement and leave your shoulders are scabbed and bloody from the weight miles away today but how far from that line did we stand hovering don’t stray long with this memory but its what we do, remember we remember give it a home tonite wrap it up in fucking bright tissue paper with fancy bows gifts to give away or dump in tomorrow’s trash maybe the youthful poets will scoop these packages up and pretend their tidy little arty worlds have seen something besides their empty reflections we are landlocked here surrounded by miles of desert land lapping at the seas edge but trapped held down by the deaths and today’s dying held down
held
down
